Gore film OK for British students

Former US vice-president Al Gore's Oscar-winning climate change documentary can be shown in English schools, a judge said yesterday, even though he believes it promotes partisan political views. Educational authorities are making Mr Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, available to all English secondary schools, a decision challenged in court by a part-time school official who claims the the film is inaccurate and biased.

High Court judge Michael Burton said the movie could be shown if the written guidance for teachers bundled with the program was changed to prevent Mr Gore's views from being promoted to children. Earlier yesterday, the Government said it was rewriting its advice. "With the guidance as now amended, it will not be unlawful for the film to be shown," Justice Burton said. The judge said, however, that he felt the film promoted "partisan political views". He did not elaborate.

Justice Burton's comments, following a four-day hearing, were not an official ruling and he said a final judgment would probably be announced next week. He said he decided to indicate what his decision would be because he felt schools needed to know in what circumstances they could show the film. During the case, schools were not required to stop showing the documentary.

It was a partial victory for claimant Stewart Dimmock, a truck driver from Dover, a port city in southeastern England, who works part-time on a school board. Mr Dimmock has said he is fighting to have his children educated in an environment "free from bias and political spin".

While An Inconvenient Truth will still be shown, the judge said British teachers would have to be careful not to endorse Mr Gore's political views when they present it to pupils. [And how likely is that?]

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An atheist who believes -- in Jewish conspiracy theory!: "A renowned atheist cited the "Jewish lobby" as a model for his campaign to promote atheism in the United States. Richard Dawkins said he wanted to gain the same kind of influence as the Jewish lobby, saying it "monopolizes" U.S. foreign policy. "When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told -- religious Jews anyway -- than atheists and [yet they] more or less monopolize American foreign policy as far as many people can see," Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist who advocates atheism, told the Guardian newspaper. "So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place." Dawkins, an Oxford professor who wrote the best-seller "The God Delusion," told the Guardian that he wants to organize American atheists to counter the influence of religious groups." [For someone as hostile as Dawkins it does figure. The man is just a hater].